Right Thinking from the Left Coast

The School to Prison Pipeline Becomes Literal

We’ve received reports that yesterday, a Belleville school teacher was locked in a bathroom at the High School due to the RFID system malfunctioning. Since school policy is to not allow the use of cell phones, no one knew where she was, or what happened to her until they went looking for her. Luckily, the teacher was carrying her purse, with her phone inside. When her co-workers retrieved their phones to try to call her, they found that she had been frantically trying to call and text people to come help her.

By the way, this is the same RFID system that the Board of Education pushed through as part of their controversial surveillance system, installed and managed by Clarity Technologies Group, at a cost of $2 million.

Even worse, when they actually discovered that she was locked in the bathroom, they could not open the door by swiping with their own RFID cards because the system had malfunctioned. Apparently someone had to come and pry open the door to finally get her out.

So … let me get this straight. In an effort, presumably, to protect schoolchildren from being abducted by aliens or something, this school spent $2 million — remember how our schools are supposedly strapped for cash? — to build an RFID system. This system is so awesome that it apparently doesn’t include a panic bar on the inside of locked room so that can people can get out in case of malfunction, loss of card or a damned fire?! We are literally locking kids into rooms they may not be able to get out of in the name of safety?

I honestly hope this report turns out to be garbled. Because I can not believe a school system could be that dumb.